This case just keeps getting more bizarre by the minute. Now taxpayers will have to foot the bill for 650 shark fins seized from a finning boat in 2011, as well as the defendant's legal fees. So ordered Puntarenas Judge Franklin Lara.
Kathy Tseng, a Taiwanese-Costa Rican businesswoman, was absolved Monday in a Puntarenas court on charges of illegally landing 652 shark fins on a Costa Rican dock in 2011. According to prosecutors and ocean conservation groups, the landmark ruling by a Puntarenas judge has opened multiple loopholes for finners looking to skirt the law.
The case started in 2011, when a boat belonging to the case’s defendant, Taiwanese-Costa Rican Kathy Tseng Chang, docked in Puntarenas, on Costa Rica's central Pacific coast. Fishermen on Tseng’s boat had allegedly carved out all of the meat, bones and innards of 36 sharks, leaving only the spinal column with the fins attached by strips of skin.
